Mister Romero in his lonely Louisiana camp broadcasted this message on the third day of year two of the zombie apocalypse. He was funny and charming, of course, but poignant. The world as they knew it had died, and while some were content to just make it day by day-he wanted something else.

He wanted to see a community rise up-it’d been tried before, over and over again but,

“If at first you don’t succeed you try try again,”

as he put it. That’s what OCS is, it’s trying again. It’s the other mission, the one that’s not so hung up on ‘saving humanity’ that they forget to save a few humans along the way.

Fifteen living breathing people (along with one horse, one parrot, and one dog) followed the coordinates and came to his camp. Some alone, some in little groups, but they all came because they had that one thing that’d become so rare in this world. They had hope. It takes all sorts to make a village, and that’s what they got, soldiers, civilians, a published author, a certifiable genius-hell one of the people who showed up had an actual living kid on his shoulders.

“Now, I ain’t saying it’s gonna work. I can’t promise we’ll live past the day we move in, but we gotta try right?”